Re-Rethinking Positive Thinking
Last week, USA Today ran an article entitled Positive thinking? It’s not enough to reach your goals. The writer of the article, Kim Painter, quotes a book written by author Gabriele Oettingen entitled Rethinking Positive Thinking: Inside the New Science of Motivation. In it, Painter says Oettingen’s book “outlines a strategy for achieving health, personal and professional goals. Her strategy involves some positive thinking, but also a sober assessment of obstacles and a plan to overcome those obstacles – if, and only if, overcoming them ends up seeming realistic and worthwhile.” Further, dreaming about a positive future “can seduce you into thinking you are already there. Then you don’t get the energy to actually go there. Instead, you just lean back and enjoy the moment.”
Everyone who reads my blog posts knows that I am a Certified Hypnotherapist in Salem, Oregon. They also know I have touted the amazing benefits of hypnotherapy in assisting people in making tremendous changes in their lives. These changes are made possible when the subconscious mind is accessed, and a variety of techniques from reframing old memories, to introducing positive outcomes (such as in sports or academic performance), to guided imagery to further a desired state, to introducing metaphors which the subconscious understands and accepts in order to apply to a client’s current state. These are but a few of the possibilities!
One thing that REALLY caught my eye in the article was the statement “One of Oettingen’s earliest studies showed that positive thinking alone can backfire when it comes to losing weight. In that study, women in a one-year weight loss program who had the most positive fantasies about future slimness lost an average of 24 pounds less than women with less rosy visions.”
Now, to be fair, nowhere in the article does it mention or reference hypnosis or hypnotherapy, or the benefits of them. When I lecture on Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy, or when asked about the effectiveness of hypnotherapy in assisting clients in losing weight, I often refer to statistics quoted in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology which says “Hypnosis was over 30 times as effective for weight loss, and hypnosis subjects lost more weight than 90% of others and kept it off.”
If it sounds like I am refuting the assertions of Painter or Oettingen, think again! I could not agree more that simply thinking positively will bring a change into fruition is not enough. How foolish would someone be to just think “I am going to lose 100 pounds” or “I am going to eliminate my fear of public speaking” simply by thinking it? There is absolutely work to be done to make the desire to change a reality. But what of the people who try everything they can think of to try and lose weight, diet after diet, yo-yoing up and down, or the person who practices a speech over and over and still cannot lose the paralyzing fear of giving that speech in front of a crowd? Then only a change in their subconscious mind to accompany that hard work will bring about the desired changes.
Something I often hear from people regarding the need for hypnosis is “If all you are doing is talking to me, why can’t I just do that myself through affirmations or meditation?” My answer is simple: “Most people doing affirmations or meditations are simply using their conscious mind to talk to their conscious mind. They never bypass their ‘Critical Factor’ and access their subconscious mind, where all change takes place. Saying “I want to lose weight” one hundred times does nothing to help you achieve that weight loss without attaching feelings to the words, the language the subconscious understands. Through the use of metaphors and guided imagery, a hypnotherapist can invoke new feelings to replace the old, destructive ones, and assist the client in making sometimes remarkable, life-altering changes!
So Oettingen (and Painter) are right – to an extent. Positive thinking alone will more often than not lead to the dramatic changes people so desperately seek. But just see what the power of words can do in the arsenal of a well-trained hypnotherapist! You will be amazed!
If you or someone you love is wanting to make a life-improving change, I invite you to contact me at Skipnotherapy through my website at www.skipnotherapy.com.